


Rock a Bye

by Fancy_Dragonqueen, tisfan



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Comic Book Science, Comic Book Violence, Consentacles, M/M, Minor Dan Lewis/Anne Weying, Minor Original Character(s), Protective Venom Symbiote (Marvel), children of venom, comic influence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 00:37:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18981613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fancy_Dragonqueen/pseuds/Fancy_Dragonqueen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Before the Life Foundation ship crashed, they sealed Venom’s children in an escape pod. Launched into space, drifting and helpless, the babies sleep, waiting...It’s up to Eddie and Venom to get the symbiote children before Richard Drake, brother of Carlton and heir to the Life Foundation, can manage it.





	1. Cradle will Rock

“Life Foundation Control, this is LF1.”

Conversations were going on that Sleeper didn’t quite understand.

Sleeper was warm and comfortable, before being born in some cold, metal place. Not a planet or a world, but a ship. A ship full of things called _humans_. Things that manipulated the parent Klyntar, forced the birth of five new symbiotes, early. Too early.

The babies were dying. Much smaller than the symbiotes that had been discovered by LF1’s crew, these couldn’t even struggle all that much. They were tucked into separate specimen containers.

Sleeper didn’t like it. They were used to being able to twist around their siblings, safe inside their parent. The cold capsule was slippery, unpleasant. They couldn’t hear the words of their family. They didn’t like it.

“This one’s trying to escape,” one of the humans said, poking Sleeper with a metal instrument until they were back in their container.

“Seal them all up in the pod,” another one said.

Sleeper couldn’t tell them apart, the humans. They all looked the same to them, brown like dirt, yellow like gloifinseed. Tall and bipedal with tiny, stupid eyes and teeth that were barely worth the name. They would possibly make good hosts, but Sleeper was too young to bond with a host. Much too young for that.

Each container, with Sleeper’s siblings, were packed away in another, larger container. Nestled together like eggs. Sleeper still couldn’t hear them, Scream and Lasher, Mayhem and Phage. Lovely, strong names. They were strong, they would be strong.

Except right now, they were all tucked into the pod. Whatever a pod was.

“The specimens are secured,” another one of the humans said, “and we're heading home.”

“Roger, LF1. You are a go for reentry.”

“Copy that.”

Sleeper couldn’t see very well through the glass of their container, and then past that, even, the glass of the pod. But they could see well enough to know that Riot, the biggest of them all, the strongest, the team leader… they were out of their container. They were out, and they were going to _do something about this._

“Initiating reentry sequence,” someone said. “Point-four by 103-point…”

Riot pounced, wrapping themselves around the human, squeezing until the flesh that made up the human burst in a crack of blood and bones. The blood splattered everywhere.

“Oh, shit.”

“Seal it off. Seal it off!”

Riot moved again, slithering so fast that they were a blur of deep grey against the metal of the ship, grabbing another human. This one, this one became a host. Riot was careful, didn’t break the body so quickly, stop the heart, sever the spine.

“LF1, Mission Control. You're breaking up. Please repeat.”

There were screams as Riot formed weapons, shields, teeth and claws.

“Mayday, Mayday, LF1! Mayday!”

“LF1, Mission Control. Please repeat…”

“LF1, Mission Control. Please repeat….”

The ship was rudderless. The human that Riot left alive didn’t know how to pilot it. Riot grabbed for the controls, but they couldn’t make sense of such tiny, delicate instruments.

**Save them!** Riot snarled. **We need them.**

“Eject…” that was the human host, trying to communicate. Or save itself. Sleeper wasn’t sure. “Eject the pod.”

Riot dragged their meatbody over to the pod full of newly born symbiotes.

“Eject,” the human said, and that pale, ugly hand moved, slapping a button.

The pod sealed itself in the darkness, and Sleeper tried to reach for Riot. **HELP US.**  There was no help. And a moment later, there was no heat. No gravity. Nothing.

They had been launched into space.

Sleeper tried to stay awake, to comfort their siblings. But the cold and the fear were too much for an infant Klyntar.

They curled up in the very bottom of their container and let themselves slip off into dreams. Someday, maybe… someone would find them.


	2. Diamond in the Sky

Eddie Brock, reporter, had had anonymous sources before. Of course, those were usually a cover for “I know exactly who I talked to, but I’m not telling you.” And he’d had less than anonymous sources, and he’d had “I stole this information illegally and my ex girlfriend took the fall,” and he’d had “a voice close to the source.”

He’d never gotten an actual, Deep Throat style anonymous tip.

“Eddie Brock,” the voice said, a rumble of gravel, like someone chain smoked three packs a day and then gargled with whiskey. Probably a computer disguiser of some sort.

“You got it, pal,” Eddie said. He shuffled his sleeve up with his chin to look at his wrist. No watch there, still. He kept forgetting to buy a new one, but he also kept forgetting he didn’t have one. And he couldn’t check the time on his phone while he was on the phone without risking the call. Private Number his caller ID had said.

 **It is eight and twenty,** Venom said, after snapping out of Eddie’s spine to go look at the clock on the microwave. **We are going to be late. Unless** \-- the symbiote paused to savor the announcement -- **we travel my way.**

“We’re not going your way,” Eddie snapped.

“What?” That was the person on the phone.

“Nevermind, sir, not talking to you. You got something for me, or is this just a crank, come on man, I want to eat my breakfast--”

“You should look into the death of Blane Ordway,” the raspy voice said. “It concerns you. And your friend.”

The call disconnected.

 **Breakfast.** Venom said, one tendril waving a piece of jam-smeared toast in Eddie’s general direction.

“Thanks, love,” Eddie said. He fiddled with his tie. A lot. He could never quite remember how to tie the damn things, and this one had slipped out of the knot that Anne had made for him months ago.

 **We are going to be late**. Venom grabbed the tie and threw it away, stuffing it deep into the trash can for emphasis. The symbiote wrapped themselves around Eddie’s throat, doing their best impression of a business tie, including a half-Windsor knot.

“Nice, thanks,” Eddie said. He finished chewing the toast, grabbed his bag and-- “Crap, we’re gonna be late.”

 **We told you so** , Venom said, smug. **We will go our way.**

“Okay,” Eddie said, because really, they didn’t have a choice. “But just this once.”

That was a threat that held no water. Eddie loved the way Venom flowed over him, encasing him in protective, black goo. They ducked out the window, raced up the side of the building, not even noticing the four storey drop below, until they reached the rooftops. Once above the city, Venom could run faster than even Eddie’s bike could manage, and they didn’t have to look for a parking space.

_Do not look down, do not look-- shit shit shit--_

Venom took over the driving, so to speak. They knew the way, just as well as Eddie did. They landed, streetside, in an alley and as Venom moved them out into the main road, the symbiote soaked into Eddie’s skin. The last bit, the tie, stayed.

“Tie with eyeballs,” Eddie commented, checking their reflection in one of the shop windows as he went by. “Classy.”

**We are always classy.**

The job interview went… badly. The whole serial murderer SNAFU was brought up.  Two meet ups with sources for other potential articles went less bad. One of them even had some good information that Eddie would have to verify, but it would make a good piece. A meeting with an agent who wanted him to write an autobiography but mostly was probing for information about the symbiotes. Eddie gave that a hard miss.

All in all, a busy day. And now…

**She likes us.**

“She likes Dan more, my love.” There was a faint wistfulness there. He knew it was over, but that didn't mean he didn't miss being together with someone.

 ** _We_** **are together.** Venom reminded him.

“Yeah, I know,” Eddie said. “It's just still an adjustment period. For everyone.”

Eddie rang the bell.

“Eddie, you’re on time, come in, come in,” Anne Weying said. She leaned in and kissed his cheek, then, as Venom slid to color his skin, kissed the other cheek. “And that’s for you, Venom. Come inside, we made your favorite.”

 **Eddie’s favorite, or our favorite?** Venom wondered.

Eddie could already smell fried potatoes, so he was guessing that dinner included tater tots, or some sort of spud-related dish, but then--

“You made _Chao Tom_?” The Vietnamese dish, shrimp paste grilled on sugarcane and served with rice paper and glass noodles, with peanut-plum sauce, was one of Eddie’s favorites from New York.

“Technically, _I_ made it,” Dan Lewis said, coming into the doorway. “Eddie. Venom. Nice to see you, happy you could make it.”

 **We never miss dinner dates.** Venom said, popping out of Eddie’s shoulder to offer a toothy smile to their hosts.

Anne looked pointedly at Eddie’s briefcase (it was empty, just a prop, but he was hoping that Anne didn’t know that.) “How was work?”

“Actually, I-- uh, got a tip,” Eddie said. “Do you all… know anything about… uh, Blane Ordway?”

“Oh, yeah, ick,” Dan said. “Poor guy got impaled on his own telescope. My sister told me about it, she’s into astrophysics, well, sort of.”

“A murder tip?” Eddie twisted his lips, considering it. “Not bad. I should do that. Might be the big break I need to get back on the map.”

“The last time you were on the map, you almost wiped us all off it,” Anne teased. “Come on, boys, let’s eat, I’m starving.”

***

“This guy was a conspiracy theory nut,” the local sheriff said. He was duly impressed when Eddie flashed his press badge, and actually seemed to know who Eddie was, in a “didn’t you blow up the Life Foundation rocket” and “weren’t you the guy who got the wrong guy in a serial murderer investigation.”

“I know a few of those,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, well, I can see why someone would want to kill one,” the sheriff continued. He opened the door to the doublewide and Eddie moved inside. The trailer itself was standard issue, the floor giving a little beneath Eddie’s feet. He marveled that someone would have a trailer in the midwest. That was like calling for tornadoes.

The living room seemed normal enough, kitchen was a little bit of a wreck. Obviously no one had cleaned after the owner died, and Ordway lived by himself. There were a lot of rooms for a bachelor. The master bed, again, normal. Again, kinda sloppy. It would take a while to look through everything, in case there were clues.

 **Is this why we are messy, Eddie? To keep people from poking through our things?** Venom wondered.

“Smart ass,” Eddie muttered under his breath.

“Pardon?”

“Bit of a mess,” Eddie corrected, giving the sheriff a wide, insincere grin.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” the sheriff said.

They went through the rest of the building; one bedroom was done up with what Eddie thought of as late period serious conspiracy theory decor; pictures and articles pinned to yarn.  “Do they take a class on this or something,” Eddie wondered, tracing one piece of string between a photograph and a star-chart. He glanced at some of the pictures, and pulled out his camera. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead,” the sheriff said. “We’ve done all our investigating.”

“Yeah? Any leads?”

Eddie didn’t really pay attention to what the sheriff was saying, photographing the various articles and newspaper cuttings, photographs and-- when the sheriff wasn’t looking, Venom slipped out, unpinned a few key pieces, and disappeared back into Eddie’s skin, tucking the pilfered items into Eddie’ back pocket.

He followed the man around, to the actual murder site, where the poor guy was literally impaled on his own telescope. Gross.

Eddie adjusted his hoodie to keep the papers from showing, peered through the other two telescopes. Nothing to see, but it was cloudy. And daytime. He wasn’t enough of an astronomy wiz to understand the angles, and even if he were, he knew that what was visible at one time and place, wouldn’t be there again, unless he got the timing just right.

“No notebook?” Eddie asked. “Most amateurs like this, they, uh, they keep a log book, that says what angle the scope was at, and what time they were making observations.”

“You think it’s important, what he was looking at? The guy was a kook. Tried to tell people that there was a big hole in the sky, few years back.”

“Oh. I guess I must have missed it when the Chiatuari came by sea, instead,” Eddie snarked.

“What?”

“Well, I guess it’s like this--” Eddie said, waving his hands around. “We’re so used to discountin’ people who tell stories about people bein’ kidnapped by aliens, or for medical experiments, that even when we know that it’s happened… we have incontrovertible proof that aliens live, and that they’ve come to Earth--”

“Yeah, don’t believe everything you read in the papers, pal?”

 **Eddie, can we give him some evidence?** Venom did not like being considered _imaginary_.

“I write in the papers,” Eddie said.

The sheriff didn’t even bother to look ashamed of himself. “Yeah, whatever. We done here?” It wasn’t a question.

“For now,” Eddie said. “I’ll let you know if I need to come back.”

“Crackpot scientist, conspiracy theories, murder. I miss the days where kids drank beer out of Dr. Pepper bottles and hung out in the Safeway parking lot.”

***

“I’ll tell ya something, Vee,” Eddie said, peering at the photos with a magnifying glass. “Nobody but nobody keeps secrets like conspiracy nuts.” He’d been in East End BeeFarm for almost a week before he managed to get his hands on the photographs. Turned out that Ordway had one friend, and the day before his death, he’d sent a thumbdrive in the mail to his friend with a big “in case of my death” note inside.

The friend had taken the drive to the local pharmacy to get the contents printed out, and it was only luck that Eddie had happened to be there -- only place in town that carried frozen tater tots and chocolate and diet cherry coke -- when the friend had showed up. Listening in, Eddie had gotten enough details to slip the friend a twenty to just hand over the photos, without even looking at them.

The friend had seemed relieved. “You know, Blane was nice enough, but if he actually found something worth killing him over, I don’t want to take responsibility for that.”

“Don’t you worry, pal,” Eddie had told him. “I gotcha covered.”

“You know who killed Blane?”

“I have some leads,” Eddie had said, cagily. He didn’t, really. Not that he actually cared. The murderer would show up eventually. What he did want to know was _why_ was Ordway murdered.

“Jackpot.”

**Do we have a clue, Eddie?**

“Well, you know us, we never have a clue,” Eddie said. “But we might have a lead.”

He enhanced the photo again, sharpened and… “Here we go, love.”

_Life Foundation, LF1_

**What is it?**

“Looks like… an escape pod, from the spaceship that brought you and your friends to Earth.”

 **Riot was not our friend,** Venom mused. **What’s in the pod?**

“What’s a damn good question,” Eddie said, scratching his chin. “And I expect, if someone got killed about it, we better get it, before someone else does.”

**We have a rocket in our pocket?**

“That does not mean what you think it means, pal,” Eddie said, chuckling. “Let’s talk to Doctor Dan’s sister, she might be able to get a bead on this thing for us.”


	3. Jumped over the Moon

Over a conference bridge, Eddie got his first look at Doctor Dan's sister. Darcy looked like a coffee shop slam poet, not a physicist, but Eddie looked like a bum and not an investigative reporter, so looks were deceiving.

 **You are a bum,** Venom commented.

“Parasite!”

**Asshole.**

“Boys! Can we please focus?”

“You got something for me?”

“Decaying orbit,” Darcy said. “Whatever it was--”

“What's that mean?”

“It crashed.”

“You got a location?”

“Is Loki a drama queen? Nevermind, the answer is yes.” She flicked something on her keyboard and Eddie was suddenly looking at a satellite feed.

“It's surrounded,” Eddie said. Cops. Reporters. “What's the news say?” he was poking his phone, adding Nebraska to his search parameters when Darcy gave him that information.

“Chemical spill,” he read. “The area is closed off.”

“Yeah that's bullshit,” Darcy said. “Chem spills don't leave craters. This was an impact.”

“Right. Text me the location. Gonna have to drive. Venom can't do airplanes.

“That's a twenty hour drive,” Darcy protested.

“Not the way I drive,” Eddie said.

**The way we drive.**

“Still,” Darcy said. “Better hurry.”

***

“That's a Life foundation stooge,” Eddie muttered. He was up a tree (don't look down) with a pair of binoculars and Venom's snide remarks in his ear. “Remember? Part of their security.”

**We should have stacked. Bodies in one corner, heads on the other. They would know better than to get in our way now.**

“Yeah, no,” Eddie said. “Bad idea.”

**We are going to have to fight them later. They don't learn.**

That was probably true but Eddie didn't want to admit it.

“I've got eyes on the prize,” Eddie said. “Under that tent thing there.”

It was probably some sort of biological containment facility, but Eddie didn't really care. They were just going to have to tear it up anyway.

“Can I get a hammock here, love?” Eddie asked. “Best wait til dark and then we'll go rain on their parade.”

 **We don’t know what difference it makes, when we rain on their parade. It will be bloody and fun.** Venom grumbled, but he did as Eddie asked, sliding goo out of their shoulders and calves, affixing him to the tree so he could catch a bit of sleep. Despite Venom’s intervention a few times, it had still taken them fourteen hours to get out, on top of a week in East End Bumblefuck. He was fucking beat to hell and back. “I’m not a teenager anymore, I can’t get by on no sleep and a lot of Red Bull.”

 **Red Bull gives you wings** , Venom told him with all seriousness.

“That’s it, I’m totally cutting off your TV access, pal,” Eddie responded, tucking his hands behind his head and staring up into the green leaves of the canopy. It was kinda pretty, little bits of the sky flickering through. Birds chirping.

He let his eyes slip shut and Venom rocked him to sleep--

\-- the only reason he wasn’t completely thrown for a loop when he woke up is that he and Venom had done this shit before.

Venom got bored and took Eddie’s body for a joy ride. Eddie had woken up some really strange places, so this was just another day in paradise--

\--threw that guy through a wall, knocking him into the car out in the grass. No parking lot, just a lot of flat grass and a trailer that was now on fire, and had a hole in the wall.

“Out, Vee--”

Through the hole in the wall, and into the grass. Guns were firing, but not very many of the bullets struck them.

“Catch me up, love,” Eddie said, using their head to stare around.

**THEY HAVE THE CHILDREN.**

Utter, complete chaos. Well, at least it wasn’t new. Someone stabbed them in the back, a hot flash of pain, and then--

“Oh jeez--”

Venom whirled and Eddie got a brief glance of some security guard before the man’s face vanished into Venom’s maw.

“Why would you do that? What? What? What kids? Wait-- Venom, what’s happening?”

**Our children, Eddie, they have them.**

Eddie was bombarded with images, memories. Agony, being drilled into, over and over again, forcing Venom’s body, the little blob of goo that they were without a host, to contract and writhe in pain. As each precious seed was extracted.

“If one had a flair for the dramatic, one might call it the last son of Venom.” Some faceless scientist, before Venom knew anything about humans, except that there was planet full of hosts and ample food supply spinning below them. He was a blur, bearded and red hair, but that was all.

“He knew your name?”

**He is dead now. They’re all dead now. The scientists from the LF1, only one lived. Riot abandoned that host almost immediately after the wreckage, badly damaged.**

“What happened to you, love?”

Forced birth, pain, humiliation, grief. Rage.

Venom’s rage unleashed on Eddie, blending them together in harmony.

That someone would hurt a creature they knew nothing about -- it didn’t matter what Riot was, it didn’t matter what any of the others were. They were irrevocably harmed and had done _nothing_. Eddie let Venom’s rage consume him.

“Heads in one corner, stack the bodies,” Eddie agreed.

Eddie didn’t like being a murderer; it hadn’t been on his list of childhood ambitions or anything. But the Life Foundation goons were just that. Goons. He supposed in the long run, it didn’t really release the stains on his soul and the scars on his psyche, marks for each life he took. They had families who would miss them, and not all of them really knew what they were getting into.

Certainly, Dr. Skirth hadn’t had any idea what she was signing up for, and when she had realized it, the first thing she’d done was go looking for Eddie. People could change, people could wake up. People didn’t have to do these sorts of things.

So Eddie closed his mind and opened his heart to Venom and let Venom rage against these monsters, the ones who’d taken their children, who’d done things, who were--

“Wait, wait, wait, where are the children?”

Because why waste time killing goons when you could go right to the source?

**We don’t know, but--**

“So, let’s ask this guy before we-- okay, maybe the next one, come on, Vee, help us out here!”

Once Eddie let Venom slip the chain, it was like trying to shut the barn door. The horse was fucking gone, it was in the goddamn hospital. _Vee, stop, stop, stop!_

They were surrounded by the dead and the dying. A few goons were fleeing. One was hiding, although he wasn’t doing a good job of it. “There. That one, let’s, okay, yeah, just lemme go, pal, I got this--”

Okay, okay, he could do this. Walked over, calmly, to the guy hiding behind a the twisted wreck of what might have been someone’s Chevy Tahoe at one point. “Okay, so, where are the symbiotes?” Eddie asked. Calm. Quiet. Like they were having an everyday sort of conversation.

The man just stared at him, blank and afraid.

“Yeah, I know, that’s Venom, and they’re feeling very bitey about the whole thing, so it would really be in your best interests to tell us where the symbiotes are.”

“A… ah… ah..” the guy stammered.

“Come on, I’m trying to help you here, tell me where they went and I promise I won’t let them eat you.”

The guy pointed a shaking finger at the path in the trees. “Truck. Armored. About five minutes before--”

“Yeah, okay, violence ensued, and maybe that was my fault, but really, pal, you gotta think for just a moment that symbiotes are just like you and me, they got families that miss ‘em,” Eddie said.

“They’re not just like you and me,” the guy snapped, pulled out a gun and shot Eddie directly in the chest.

Oh, fuck, fucccck fuck that--

Venom stretched over him, covering him with heat and soothing the pain.

**We lied.**

Eddie gasped for breath as Venom rebuilt his heart. Yeah, okay, not going to feel too bad for that guy-- he winced. Well, maybe a little bad.

“Come on, Vee, don’t play with your food.”

It seemed like Eddie’s new catchphrase was some variety of _come on, really?_

**It hurt you.**

“I’m fine now,” Eddie said. “Let’s get the truck, okay?”

***

In retrospect, everything was going just a little too well, and if Eddie had been paying attention, he would have been worried about that.

The truck spotted, Venom leaped after it, claws at the ready to snatch up the precious cargo. There were only three guards, two in the cab, one in the back, and there was no steel on Earth strong enough to resist Venom’s strength -- so long as he had a host.

Unhosted, like the babies in their pod, the Symbiotes weren’t weak, exactly. But purchase, leverage, bones. Those required a host. Even something as small as a rat or a rabbit would do. For a while. Smaller creatures burned out quickly.

Eddie was just starting to wonder what they’d do with baby Symbiotes -- he couldn’t host more than one at a time, could he--

Mid leap, Venom was caught, squeezed painfully, and thrown aside.

**KNULL.**

Eddie wondered what a Knull was. He rolled over, tried to look up. The truck just kept doing its thing, rolling down the road. Ignoring the monsters behind it, or not even noticing them, or maybe they were retreating. Hard to tell. Their head was spinning like crazy.

“What’s a--”

**KNULL!**

They were thrown again, even further. They twisted, mid-air, destroyed a whole handful of trees to slow their fall.

“What is it?” Eddie didn’t bother waiting for the answer before leaping back into the fray. Hostile, was what it was, so the rest of it didn’t really matter all that much.

 **KNULL** , Venom explained, as they dodged the huge monster that was throwing trees and pieces of road, boulders -- was that a VW Microbus, what even the hell, where had that come from? -- at them. **Leader. Ruler. God-king. They control the Grendel.**

“Grendel? Like, fucking Beowulf’s Grendel?”

**I do not know what that is.**

“Neither do I, love,” Eddie said. “Literature was never my best subject. There was a shitty movie about it, though.”

There is always a shitty movie.

“Got me there--” They couldn’t get close, the Grendel/Knull was too fast, had too long of a reach.

It was _huge_ , easily three times the size of Venom, with horns and-- Jesus, the fucking thing ran on all fours, like some sort of giant bull, knocking everything over with vicious sweeps of those horns.

Eddie had seen Venom bonded with a dog -- for short periods of time -- and they mostly looked like a dog. Bonded with a human, Venom looked, well, humanoid, at least. “What the fuck’s that thing bonded with--”

**The Grendel. We told you that.**

“What the fuck is a Grendel?” It really didn’t matter. Eddie rolled, lead it away. Strategic retreats. In the distance, he saw a Roxxon gas station, a Hardeez, a-- oh, gas station. “Want to live dangerous, my love?”

**Don’t we always?**

They raced for the gas station. The Grendel was right behind them, but slower-- its huge body could tear down trees, but it still had to deal with that. Physics still applied. Mostly.

The convenience store was not empty, which was a problem. **Everybody out!** Venom bellowed as they crashed through the glass. The store emptied really fucking fast, so that was good. Screaming, people fled into the night.

 **Chocolate**. Tentacles extended from Venom’s back, grabbing candy bars and stuffing them, wrapper and all, into Venom’s gaping maw.

“Venom, come on. It’s time to work,” Eddie said. He found the display of lighters, pulled his hands free from Venom’s goops in order to do up close, fine work. Matter of seconds to jimmy the safety to not-so-safe. Venom snapped several tendrils out, requesting access for all the pumps.

Over the counter, punching in stuff in the register-- Eddie had worked convenience stores before and they were all pretty standard. Emptied the register while he was at it, because no sense letting the money burn. He was just tugging the safe out when the Grendel barreled into the store.

The overwhelming scent of gasoline filled the air.

 **Banks, but no banks,** Venom said, throwing the safe at the Grendel, smashing its huge face in for a moment, stunning it. Taking advantage of that, Venom leaped out through the same hole that the Grendel had come in.

Eddie waited until they were on the edge of the parking lot, flicked the lighter and threw-- “go, go, go!”

He didn’t need to tell Venom twice. They were scrambling away from the fire with all due haste even as it caught.

 **Will it explo--** They weren’t… quite fast enough.

The night erupted into flames. Everything went very bright… and then very dark.


	4. If That Looking Glass Gets Broke

“... no love,” Eddie said, dragging himself another few feet. “Too badly hurt, need.. Hospital…”

\--dark, pain, awful, awful burning--

Venom was talking, threatening someone? Pleading.

**YOU will call Doctor Dan Lewis!**

“Vee, don’t hurt anyon--”

**Shhh, Eddie. We are taking care of it.**

“Oh, god, oh, god, it’s a person in there?” Someone was panicking, someone Eddie didn’t know.

**You will help him. You will help my Eddie.**

***

There were machines that went _beep_.

“No MRIs,” Eddie mumbled.

“No, Eddie, we got this, you’re fine--”

He looked up into Anne’s eyes, so beautiful, and then they went black and hollow. **We’re here, Eddie. We’re watching out for you.**

“Annie, Annie, I’m sorry--”

“If you’re feeling better, Mr. Venom, do you think you could do something-- the actual medical procedure for these kinds of burns--”

Dr. Dan.

“Met your sister,” Eddie told him. “She’s a little spitfire, ain’t she?”

“Darcy?” Dr. Dan said. “Yes. She is quite impressive. Political science major. Not quite sure how she ended up with a degree in astrobiology, but there you have it. Ah, that’s nice, Mr. Venom, look at the regeneration of this tissue sample, it’s amazing. If we could all have a symbiote, we wouldn’t need doctors anymore.”

**That is true,** Venom mused. **Klyntar has no doctors. If you fight, someone dies. There is no time for healing outside of battle.**

A brief memory, a flash of Venom surrounding Anne, and kissing him, kissing them, he was-- Eddie was kissing Anne. And Venom. And they were kissing him, and they were kissing Anne… it was a muddle in his head.

“You’re getting better, Eddie, just hang in there,” Anne said. She was touching his face, and he could feel her skin against his, the way she was cool and dry and he was sweaty and a mess.

“I love you.”

**We know.**

***

When Eddie slept, a symbiote wrapped around him, he dreamed.

Before he’d met Venom, become part of something much greater than himself, he didn’t dream much. Not like other people -- he remembered a woman in the bullpen once telling a fascinated coworker about her dreams. _But it was a seedless grape._

The paper had run a column on dream interpretation, and Eddie had never quite understood why people would write in about their dreams -- not their goals or daydreams, but actual dreams.

For that matter, why anyone would care to interpret them. Dreams were just brain garbage. Eddie slept like a rock, no garbage in his brain, thank you.

Even when he thought he should be plagued by nightmares, he slept soundly, woke up refreshed. “You’re a freak of nature, Brock,” one of the other reporters at the _Globe_ had said.

But shortly after Venom came to inhabit Eddie’s body, share a mind with him, Eddie had dreamed.

He’d dreamed of Klyntar, dreamed of space. He’d dreamed of the vast battles that Venom had seen, of the conquering of other planets. Enough dreams to make him stare up into the night sky and shudder.

**Earth is a small planet in a backwater galaxy. It is insignificant.**

“Except to the people who live here.”

**We will protect the Earth.**

He dreamed of his father, and the way his father never cared. The way his sister Mary had blamed him. Everything had been fine, before Eddie came along. Mary had a mother and a father who loved each other. Their father had loved her, had been concerned with her life.

And then Eddie came, with his too-big head, and his mother died. Complications in childbirth.

Eddie’s fault.

“He’s lying,” Eddie said, watching the television. A politician was protesting his involvement with a hooker.

“What?” His father barely raised his eyes from the paper.

“How can they not tell that he’s lying? I can always tell.”

“That’s nice, Eddie.”

Father was lying, too.

An argument with his sister.

“Come now, Mary,” Father said. “We don’t blame Eddie for your mother’s death.”

“What are you crying about now?”

“He was lying. I can always tell.”

Anne was there, her hand on his forehead. “Annie?”

“You’re sick, Eddie,” she said, and Eddie couldn’t tell if he was asleep or if he was awake.

“Where’s Venom?”

Anne’s eyes went black and her mouth stretched in an impossible smile. **We’re here. Resting. You rest, Eddie.**

Venom wasn’t with him, and these dreams were haunting him. Eddie was hot, but when he tried to push the blankets off, there was nothing there.

He was vaguely aware of someone changing an IV bag at his side. “We’re taking care of you, and Venom. It’s all right, don’t you worry about a thing, you just concentrate on getting better.”

“What happened?”

“You were in the middle of a gas station explosion,” Dr. Dan told him. “You have third degree burns over more than seventy percent of your body. That’s a lot of nerve trauma. Venom’s having to do it slow, in batches.”

“I don’t-- I’m not in pain,” Eddie said, trying to remember why that was bad, it was so bad, and he couldn’t remember why.

He slipped away before Dr. Dan could explain, remembering the night, so long ago.

A kid in the street, running. Wearing black clothes and a cap. Eddie never saw him coming; nineteen years old, fresh out of high school, and he slammed on the brakes but--

“Dad--”

“Eddie, no,” Father said. “This wasn’t your fault, I’m not going to see you go to prison for it.” Father was lying again. It _was_ Eddie’s fault. Or maybe it wasn’t, Eddie couldn’t tell anymore. But his father wasn’t helping him because he believed that Eddie was innocent. That it was just a horrible accident.

“It wasn’t your fault, horrible accident.”

Eddie stood at the grave, looking at the half-sized grave. The mother hadn’t believed that at all, couldn’t believe that Eddie had the gall to show up at her son’s funeral after Eddie had been the one to kill him.

“I’m so sorry,” Eddie had tried, and she’d slapped him, her black-crepe hat falling into the dirt.

Eddie deserved that, he relished it. He wanted to pay for the things he did. He wanted to have nightmares and wake in a cold sweat. He wanted to feel like it was real, like…

Like he was real.

**You’re a loser.**

“Thanks, buddy, I know,” Eddie said. Venom was inside him, healing, pulsing, warm and comforting.

**My loser.**

“Nobody else wants me, pal, think you’re safe,” Eddie said.

“More people care about you than you think--”

That couldn’t be right, that was Maria’s voice, and she was gone and dead, and Dr. Skirth was petting Eddie’s hair. “We call them symbiotes, the bonding of symbiote and human is rare-- you’re a magnificent host, Eddie.”

Eddie groaned, trying to escape his dead, and there was no escape from them. His sister, gone so young from cancer, the mother he never met. His uncle, who was kind to him. All the people that the copycat Sin Eater had killed, while Eddie was trying so hard for a story, to finally get a real scoop, that he--

_Stop it, stop it, leave me alone!_

**We’re here, Eddie,** Venom said. **We’ll protect you.**

“I don’t need protection,” Eddie protested. “I need to make up for all the bad shit I done.”

“Well, not today,” Dr. Dan said. “Today is for rest and recovery.”

And everything started all over again.

***

Eddie didn’t know how much time had passed. Too much.

Whatever had happened was already done and gone. He laid in the hospital bed, listening to the various bleeps and chirps of the machinery, like he was in an aviary full of robo-birds.

“Eddie?”

That was Anne, soft and hesitant, like she knew he was awake, but was giving him an out if he wanted it.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Eddie said, not opening his eyes, not wanting to see anything. Not wanting to know. But he was a reporter. If he couldn’t change the world -- and he couldn’t, the world was stubbornly insisting on going straight to hell -- than he could at least report the truth of it. “How, uh, like, how long?”

“About a week,” Anne said. “Venom brought you to us. We thought-- he thought. We thought you might die. It was bad, Eddie. Your back was broken and you had third degree burns. It was…”

“Yeah, I bet I looked like a charcoal briquette.”

Anne made a grimace that looked nothing like a smile but showed off a lot of teeth. “It was bad,” she repeated.

“But Venom--”

“He’s okay, he’s resting in one of those… little pod things,” Anne said. She always stuck with the masculine pronouns. Venom didn’t care, and Eddie had to admit from the outside, Venom kinda did look like a dude. Except when they were bonded with Anne, in which case they looked ridiculously over-feminine. “He worked really hard healing you up. I-- uh, had to take him out for a while.”

“You went all vigilante?” Both Eddie’s eyebrows went up. He knew Anne had some trouble with what had happened the last time she bonded with Venom. And it wasn’t like “I joined with my ex boyfriend’s people-eating alien parasite and ate some bad guys” was something you could exactly discuss in therapy.

“It… um,” Anne said, twisting her fingers together. “You get used to it. Isn’t it horrible, that you get _used to it_?”

Eddie wanted to reassure her, that she was still a good person, except he was the last person who could tell her so. He was well and truly compromised. “What happened?”

“They were going to kill you, they were sent to kill you,” she said. “Venom and I, we just went for a walk, he needed to rest and I thought we could go down to the city and look for, you know, a mugger or something? I mean, I wasn’t thinking that, I was--”

“You were hunting,” Eddie said. “I know. I know how it is, how reasonable it seems. Venom’s… they see things differently. And that spills over.”

“Symbiotic bleed,” she said, nodding. “We were on the rooftop, you know he likes to stretch his legs a little.”

Eddie grinned. Venom relished the feeling of their powerful body. Here, on earth, where Venom could be so much more. Where they were stronger, faster…

“And we just… I don’t know. It couldn’t have been coincidence. That Venom wasn’t hunting so much as he was patrolling. That he knew something like this could happen.”

“Who were they?”

“Life Foundation. Richard Drake’s taken over the company,” Anne said. She flipped through her phone and showed Eddie a crisp profile picture. “I don’t know if he’s anything like Carlton or not, but he hires goons, so yeah, he’s probably taking a page from his brother’s book.”

“I wonder how you get a job as a goon,” Eddie wondered. “Venom an’ me, that’d be right up our alley, don’t you think?”

“Can you not joke?” Anne burst out. “I was an accessory to murder, I ki-ki-killed and ate _six people_ , Eddie.”

“That were going to kill me and probably try to force Venom to bond with someone else,” Eddie pointed out. “And no, honestly, I don’t think I can not joke about it anymore, honey. I’m sorry, but if I really sit down and think about this shit, I will go insane. Not that anyone would be able to tell. They were _bad people_ , Anne. Even assuming that I probably deserve to be shot these days, someone who will hire out to murder-- they weren’t pure as the driven snow before this happened. They were dirty, Anne. You may have taken six lives, but you saved who even knows how many. And you got retribution for people they already killed.”

“I don’t know that it makes it all right,” Anne said, tearing up. She blotted her eyes with a tissue, stretching her mouth in that way she did when she was trying not to smear her eyeliner. “I think I’ve brushed my teeth about eighty times. A whole tube of toothpaste, Eddie!”

“I thought I detected a hint of minty freshness,” Eddie said.

He fully expected Anne to punch him several times in the shoulder and chest, he would totally have deserved it, but instead, she just stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing, so hard that she was crying, smearing her damn makeup anyway, practically collapsed on the bed and howling.

It took a while before she could do more than just look at him without cracking up again, but eventually the giggles tapered off.

“Thanks,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” Eddie said. He didn’t quite know what he’d done, but for a change, it had been exactly the right thing. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- note: Eddie’s dream about his father and sister from Venom: Dark Origins
> 
> \-- But it was a seedless grape, taken from Dilbert Comic Strip https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-05-04
> 
> \-- note: hitting the kid with his car, Venom #10. In the comic, Eddie was drunk and totally to blame. In this AU, it was an accident, kid in dark clothes at night. Eddie feels a lot of guilt, part of the reason he ended up becoming a journalist is to expose people who get away with things because of their money or family position


	5. Under the Haystack, Fast Asleep

Eddie wasn’t dreaming, but it seemed like too much work to open his eyes.

Someone was holding him, he was laying in a warm embrace that was becoming warmer. Soft, and yet firm in all the right places.

Stroking his hair, playing the the shell of his ear.

It was nice.

Eddie snuggled into his lover, reaching--

“Vee?”

**We’re here, Eddie.**

Because of course it was Venom. Eddie hadn’t had a lover since Anne, and Anne was well before Venom. It didn’t really seem fair to try to have a one night stand, either. Venom was curious about human interactions, and they weren’t always inclined to stay hidden, either.

A few rounds of hide the parasite and Eddie could probably kiss off any chance of ever getting laid again.

**You don’t need another human, Eddie.**

“You’re not s’posed to be digging around in my head,” Eddie mumbled. “We talked about that, Vee. You know, right to privacy ‘n boundaries an’ all that.”

**We did. But you are also thinking very loud. And poking us with your weiner.**

“My what?”

**Your weiner, your big johnson, your wife’s best friend, your throbbing man--**

“I know what my cock is, thank you, I don’t need the thesaurus run-down. Jesus, you watch too much of the wrong television.

**We read books.** Venom sounded somewhat offended.

“No you don’t,” Eddie protested. “There’s not a single book in my apar--” Except for the stack of romance novels that he’d accidentally taken when he moved out of Anne’s place. She’d had a running membership with a local used book store that took two romance books and gave one back. Which didn’t keep her from reading a million of the things, because she always brought back more than half again the same stack. “You’ve been reading bodice rippers?”

**Bodice rippers.** Venom turned the word around a few times, exploring it. **Sounds messier than they were.**

“Was that… disappointing?” Because of course Venom would read something called a bodice ripper. Even if, Anne had told him so pointedly, a number of times, very seldom did anyone actually rip anyone else’s clothes off.

**Not disappointing. We are curious.**

Venom wasn’t always part of Eddie, sometimes they came all the way out and lay on top of Eddie like a pet. Or they spread over him like a blanket, or clothes. Venom was the best combination of silly putty and a cat, really. Eddie felt tendrils of Venom’s mass, slithering to wrap around his bare legs -- he was still in a hospital gown, for fuck’s sake -- and spread his thighs.

Yeah, okay, so Eddie was dealing with some morning wood that turned abruptly into morning steel, because, well, everyone had a Japanese Anime phase, right? It was a thing, there was probably even some fancy name for it, tentacle porn and being held down, tied up, and he really ought to stop--

\--another set looped around his wrists, yanking his hands over his head.

**Eddie, tell us about it.**

“What have you been reading?” Eddie wondered, not bothering to struggle. He knew that Venom could hold him. Especially now that they’d been together for a while and Venom knew exactly how all of Eddie’s body parts worked. When they were first joined, Venom and Eddie fought constantly for dominance.

And strangely enough, despite all of Venom’s strength, and the way they could wait it out, Eddie was the dominant one.

Eddie, who decided how much Venom could have, and what they could do.

The symbiote was like a kid, or a puppy, always pushing to see where the boundaries were, but it hadn’t taken Eddie long to figure out that Venom craved Eddie’s approval, more than they wanted anything else.

Eddie took a few deep breaths. “Vee, let go,” he said, soft, not angry or scared. Like he was in charge and expected to be obeyed.

**Aww**. Venom complained, but they unwrapped themselves. Slowly, dragging those heated tendrils down Eddie’s skin. **You don’t want to play?**

“Didn’t say that,” Eddie said. “Just, you gotta ask before you go gettin’ all up in someone’s business.”

**We are always up in your business, Eddie.**

“Still, you have to ask,” Eddie said. “Even if it was yes last time. Ask first.”

**Why?**

“Because… you can damage me, if the answer’s no.”

**We can fix that.**

“Actually, no, you can’t,” Eddie said. “If you break me, like that… psychologically? Then I’m damaged, damaged for good. It doesn’t mean I won’t be able to lead a good life, or get over it, but trauma like that? You can’t just wrap around me and make it go away. And if you caused it? Vee, I could stop trusting you, could start feeling like you’re a danger to me. You don’t want that, do you?”

**No. We love you, Eddie.**

“I love you, too, Vee,” Eddie said, and it had been a casual sort of thing between them. He loved Venom the same way he might love a pet, or a good friend. It hadn’t occurred to him, mostly, because Venom was just so weird, so _alien_ , there weren’t words to describe what it was like to so completely share himself with another… being.

**We don’t always love our hosts,** Venom offered, tentatively. **Usually, we don’t. No more than you love a taxi. But you’re special, Eddie. A good host. The best host.**

“But, you love Anne?”

**Not like we love you.**

“Oh.”

**Is that wrong?**

“No, just… changes things, a little.” Eddie scrubbed his fingers through his hair, trying to think. Venom let themselves flow over Eddie’s scalp, scritching and rubbing and duplicating the feeling. It was nice, really, someone petting him, making him feel good. Eddie sank back into it, the way he’d relax into the sink at the hairdresser’s, while someone washed his hair for him and chatted gossip that he didn’t care about at all.

Nice.

Really nice.

Eddie couldn’t quite stifle an almost sexual groan as Venom lifted up his neck and prodded at it with gentle tendrils.

**You like it. We can make you feel good, Eddie.**

“I just bet you can,” Eddie snorted, then-- “Yeah, I expect you could, Vee, at that.”

**Can we try?**

Eddie considered it for a moment -- it was pretty sick, even by the fetlife crew standards. Your kink it not my kink and all that, but _dude…_

Except who else was he ever going to be able to have sex with again? What was he going to do, banish Venom to the bathtub while he got it on? And it couldn’t possibly mean as much. Not like it did to Venom, who knew everything about Eddie there was to know, who called him a loser and who joked about it, but who still loved Eddie with everything inside.

He’d never been loved like that before, even when it was good with Anne, it hadn’t been _unconditional_ love. When would he ever be loved like that again?

“Yeah, yeah, okay, love,” Eddie said. “We can try. Go-- slow. An’ careful, I want to have time to freak out.”

**Do we freak you out?**

“Sometimes,” Eddie admitted. “Not as much as you used to.”

**We will be careful.**

Venom rippled over him like a wave, a squeeze along Eddie’s body. Calves, and knees, thighs and belly, a trail of something like fingers up his chest.

“What can-- I mean, what do you like?” Eddie wondered.

**We like you.**

“Yeah, I’m getting that, love,” Eddie said, “but I mean, sex, it’s a two-way street. I do for you, you do for me, that’s fair.”

**You enjoy it.**

That was a squeeze over Eddie’s dick, which twitched and swelled against the pressure. “No, duh, but it’s a give and take, is there somewhere you want me to touch you, someplace that--”

**Klyntar do not have sex.**

“So, like, what, you’re a virgin?”

**That’s a social contract. But we have never had sex. You enjoy, we will feel what you feel. We will take your joy into us. It will be good.**

“You’ve been talking to Annie without me again,” Eddie laughed, and then gasped as Venom formed a slender tendril that, without teasing or prep, went right up his ass. “Oh, woah, woah, slow it down, it’s… it’s a slow thing, like--” Eddie sorted through his memories, remembering a dinner date, oh, years ago now, before Anne, even. Cutting his steak in tiny bites, making eye contact with his date while they ate. Enjoying just being together.

**Eddie, we do that all the time.**

“Still, no need to rush it, big guy,” Eddie said, but he was relaxing into an all over symbiote massage. Venom was good about heating him up, and then keeping him cool, squeezing and prodding at stubborn muscles. Even when Venom kept him healed up and Eddie felt good, like all the time good and healthy, he loved getting a rubdown. Just the touches, the care and attention. It was like a sugar high, sweet and clean and perfect.

Venom rubbed him down, stroked along his back. Eddie had no idea what it looked like from the outside, what someone else would see if they walked into the room. Didn’t matter. Eddie closed his eyes and let his head tip back. Venom hadn’t retracted the tendril from his ass, either, swelling and shrinking to massage at his rim, the very tip of it rubbing at Eddie’s prostate. Almost, but not quite, soothing, but each time they did it, Eddie rolled his hips up, to meet that touch, to beg for it, mutely.

“Can you kiss?” Eddie wondered. “Like, like we did with Anne, only, watch the teeth, buddy…”

It wasn’t a kiss, it wasn’t anything like a kiss. Venom’s body was a mass of writhing goo, and they used it. They slid into Eddie’s mouth, a tongue, twisting alongside Eddie’s, plugging his mouth, offering sensation over every centimeter. He spluttered, choked on it. It was like deepthroating dick that moved and wriggled, and once Eddie’s body stopped panicking -- Venom wouldn’t let him suffocate -- he relaxed into it.

Venom fucked his throat, his mouth, eager and easily, throbbing, pulsing. The tendril up Eddie’s ass matched rhythms.

Tiny feelers slid up and down his body. Pinched and plucked at his nipples until Eddie’s spine was bowed with it, trying to push up into the touch.

Where another lover might have teased or played, Venom gave Eddie everything that his body craved without coyness or temptation. Just gave and gave and gave until every nerve ending in Eddie’s body was on fire with need, until his balls ached and grew heavy, pressure building at the base of his spine. His pelvis rolled with it, thrusting up against Venom, into Venom. A tunnel of slick, heated symbiotic flesh that pulsed and pulled at him.

Eddie didn’t know how long it went on, there was never anything else to worry about. Venom was gaining their own satisfaction from letting Eddie fall apart, so the normal ebb and flow of sex was gone, and it was just wave after wave of pleasure.

When he finally couldn’t take any more, he arched up, letting himself come, the pressure in his spine and balls coalescing into white hot heat over his entire body. Muscles seized up, impossibly tight, and then he was screaming, screaming with it, and Venom was there, Venom was every _where_. Was _every_ thing.

Was the only thing.

“God,” Eddie said, when words finally made sense to him again, panting for breath. “I love you.”

**We love you, too, Eddie. You are ours, and we are going to take care of you.**


	6. Tip me Over and Pour Me Out

“Anne, can-- oh, hi,” Eddie said, practically stumbling into the chair in her office before realizing that it was already occupied by a client.

Anne took a deep breath. “Eddie, I left instructions that I wasn’t to be disturbed.”

“Yeah, I ignored that,” Eddie said. “It’s important.”

“Strangely enough, other people find their time is important, too,” Anne said, stern. “Go out and sit in the waiting room, and I’ll get to you as soon as I have a moment.” She turned to her client. “Sorry, ex-boyfriend. He’s got a limited understanding of personal -- and professional -- boundaries. Go.” She pointed her finger imperiously at him.

One of these days, Eddie was going to realize that he wasn’t the bright center of the universe. Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps.

Okay, probably not.

She loved him, but he was such an ass sometimes. Which is why she’d decided to move on, to find someone who realized that she _had_ needs. The first few months after she’d left Eddie, before Dan, she’d almost gotten desperate a few times. Don’t text, don’t call, don’t hook up with your ex. And she hadn’t.

She still loved Eddie, and it was a different love from how she felt about Dan. Eddie was-- like a child. Or a hyperactive pet.

Dan had his own job, his own life, was able to fix a meal like an actual adult.

Maybe it was unfair of her; she knew she’d been willing to put up with a lot of Eddie’s flaws -- he was cute, and funny, and great in bed -- right up until he’d fucked her over without even thinking about it.

Her client gave her a sympathetic look. “Men, right?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” Anne said, waiting for the door to shut and then getting back to specifics. She did have a job to do, and bitching about her ex wasn’t getting that done.

When she had a few minutes, she was surprised that Eddie was still there. He usually didn’t have the patience to wait. If she couldn’t see him right away, he’d go off and do something else stupid.

“Come on,” she said, ushering him into her office. He looked good for someone who’d almost died of burns less than two weeks ago, except, as usual, he was wearing scruffy clothes and looked like he only had a nodding acquaintance with his shower.

“Is there some reason why you keep telling people I’m your ex?”

“Is there going to be a time in my life when you’re _not_ my ex-boyfriend?” Anne wondered. “Look, there’s a lot of baggage that comes with being ex’s with someone. We’re friends, but that friendship comes with these added little bonuses that can only really be explained in that simple truth. We once used to sleep together, and now we don’t.”

Eddie appeared to consider that for a moment, then nodded. “That’s fair,” he said. “You know I love Dr. Dan to pieces, right, wouldn’t ever want to get-- you know, between you or anything, and I didn’t-- I wanted to make sure--”

“Dan isn’t worried about that. And I don’t think you should, either. You… you have your significant other now.” Venom was pretty significant. She tried really hard not to spend much time thinking about her own time bonded with the symbiote. Venom was powerful, loyal. Anne was almost traumatized by the lack of trauma from the event. Like, she should feel differently, now that Eddie was a murderer. Now that _she_ was a murderer.

**Thank you, Anne. We told him that.**

It had been self defense, or defense of Eddie, the death.

The _cannibalism_ , on the other hand. There were days she couldn’t deal with the fact that-- she wasn’t a gibbering mess? How was that logical?

“So, uh, yeah, you’re welcome,” Anne said, pushing the thoughts from her head. Again. One of these days, she was going to have to deal with them.

But not today.

Eddie pushed his tongue around in his mouth for a moment. “Yeah, like, we need your help,” Eddie said.

“That’s news,” Anne said, dripping sarcasm. “What now?”

**Our children.**

“Look, we can probably get into the Life Foundation if we have to, but we’re going to have half the goons in the city chasing us, and it was just a mess last time. We know they’re in there-- we want you--”

“To do what?”

“You’ve been a host,” Eddie said, eyebrows going up as he waited for her to finish the sentence.

She just waited. She wasn’t going to give him this. Yes, more than likely, she’d help him, help them, but-- if he was going to ask for help, he was going to damn well do it properly.

The battle of silent wills raged for all of about thirty seconds. Eddie rarely had patience, and he’d probably spent all of it in her waiting room. “We want you to go in, host for one of them, and get them out of there.”

“I can’t decide who I hate more right now,” Anne said, shaking her head. “You, for asking this of me. Or me, because I’m going to do it. What’s the plan?”

***

Because of course Eddie didn’t have a plan. He was the planless wonder. It had been charming back in the day, the way he took things one day at a time, rolled with the punches and made shit up off the top of his head.

Less cute now that Anne was in a situation where she might very well _get killed_.

On the plus side, Anne was never the person who left things to the last minute, who didn’t keep records, and who didn’t usually have some sort of plan.

“I have a meeting with Mr. Drake,” Anne said. “I called this morning about some files. Anne Weying, no that’s an e, thanks. Yes, I’ll wait.”

The secretary indicated a little waiting area. Richard Drake had never met her. From everything she could dig up on the guy in a three day period, he barely knew anything about his brother. He and Carlton had been estranged.

Which made the whole symbiote abduction thing… well, maybe a little bit strange.

“Ms. Weyling, Mr. Drake will see you, now,” the secretary said.

Richard Drake didn’t look much like his brother, being shorter, stockier, and blonder. The streaks of fashionably dyed hair spelled out someone who wanted to be taken seriously as a rebel, someone who bucked tradition.

“Mr. Drake,” Anne said, extending her hand, “thanks for meeting me.”

“Call me Rick… that’s with a silent P,” he said.

Anne coughed uncertainly, not sure if she was supposed to laugh at that or not. “Rick, then,” she said.

“And I’ll call you Anne,” Rick said. “Like we’re old friends. Because I’m pretty sure you’re about to make me an interesting offer, and that’ll go much better if we’re friendly. Are we… friends?”

Anne did not roll her eyes, but only because she’d had years of experience at this point in dealing with fools and imbeciles, and Rick Drake appeared to be both. “Of course,” she said. “And I do have an offer for you.” She offered him a file from her briefcase.

“What’s this, then?” He opened it, flipping idly through the pages. “Edward Brock’s medical reports?”

Carefully doctored and falsified, but not in any way that a layman might be able to see at a glance; they didn’t want to give the Life Foundation any _actual_ ammunition.

“I don’t know how much you know about the events leading up to your brother’s death--”

“I know some,” Rick said. “Enough to know this individual was involved. And that quite a lot of my brother’s research and materials were lost. We’ve been… slowly making up the lack.”

“Well, I have a quicker way to do that,” Anne offered. “My team and I have been studying the effects of, shall we say, ill-advised bonding, and we’ve come up with some interesting theories. But we need your help to go any further. I understand this is highly privileged information--”

“Brock stole critical materials and research--”

“Yes, no one’s denying that,” Anne said. “But we’ve made our own discoveries, and I think your team would be very interested in our data.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“We know how to match up a symbiote with a host, without endangering either,” Anne said.

That was the bait. And it wasn’t entirely untrue. Venom had submitted, with some grumbling, to a few tests.

Part of Carlton Drake’s issues had been that he was unwilling to test on someone with a family who might miss them, ask questions, if they died unexpectedly. So Drake was testing on homeless and destitute, people who were already desperately ill.

A regular person, one without too many health issues, could host a symbiote for some length of time before the breakdown of major organs would occur. That time, they’d discovered, could be greatly extended-- “We have a compound that extends viability of the bond.”

Anne could almost see the board come alive as Rick looked at her. “Would you please repeat that.”

Anne took a few sterile needles and a vial of bluish liquid out of her case. “We have an injection that can greatly extend the viability of a host. Care to try it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes -- Rick with a silent P = (P)Rick was how my ex boyfriend used to introduce himself. His best friend was named Carl, and they were a disaster in the making. So, I’m kinda paying a little homage/joke about an ex...


	7. And Jill Came Tumbling After

So, two out of five was… not as good as she might have wanted. Anne had one of the symbiote children under her arm, still contained in its shatterproof container. The other one had slipped into Anne’s body with the same ease that Venom had done.

Mayhem was… quieter than their father. Subtle.

But just as strong, which was good, because Anne had badly miscalculated what, exactly, was going on at the Life Foundation.

“I need to make a call,” Anne said, trying to talk to the creature that had taken over her body. The problem with a symbiote was things like reaching into her damn purse became almost impossible. Anne wasn’t even sure where her purse was, or for that matter, where her body was. She didn’t feel wrapped in goo, exactly. (When Venom had done this to her, she’d been too panicked about being invaded by an alien parasite to even begin to think about what it _felt like_.)

**Shall I stop running?** Mayhem asked. How a symbiote could be both solicitous and brutally sarcastic at the same time, Anne wasn’t sure. **Toxin is right behind us. We could just take care of him. He would stop chasing us if he were dead.**

Anne had taken the enhanced symbiosis drug -- to prove to Rick that it wasn’t a poison -- and then Rick had all but snatched it out of her hand, turning into nine and a half feet of goey green symbiote. **We’ll just be keeping this--**

Why hadn’t they even considered the fact that, if Carlton Drake could form a symbiotic bond with Riot, that Richard Drake could have done the same?

On the plus side, Mayhem had taken matters into her own claws, breaking out of her sleeper tube and forcing herself right up Anne’s nose. At least, Anne was pretty sure it was a plus side. She wasn’t dead yet.

“There’s no way you can get my damn phone out of my purse while you’re running?” Anne found herself suddenly with one hand free and-- her tube of lipstick. “That’s not it.”

They went through any number of things inside Anne’s purse, most of which Mayhem ate-- **I’m putting them back, promise** when Anne shrieked about it. **Stars, would you relax?** \-- before they finally figured out what a phone was, and then how to even start using it.

“Call Dan!”

The phone rang a few times, “yes, hello, honey--”

“Could use a little help here--” Mayhem was leaping over tall buildings, not so much with the single bound, but more cutting huge gouges into the sides of the concrete walls and climbing up them like King Kong on a mission to get to Fay Wray.

“Where?” Dan asked, and she could already hear him pushing himself away from his desk. That was one of the things that she loved about Dan. If he was with a patient, he would have said. If he was doing anything else, she came as the second priority. Job first, then woman, then everything else. It was a list that she’d never been able to convince Eddie applied to him. And to her. Her job came first.

Eddie had never understood that.

**This is boring, are you sure we can’t fight?**

“I don’t want to break your sibling’s containment until we have a host set up for them.”

“You have-- what, you have another one, Anne, Anne, where are you?”

“I’m wearing one, carrying another. Get the police scanner and follow the chaos.”

I am not Chaos, I am Mayhem.

“Sure, sister, whatever you say,” Anne said. “Just get out here! And dose up.”

“Sure. Sure. My sister deals with Gods all the time, I can handle this. Give me an address.”

“Uh, I’m near Irving, headed toward Ashbury, not exactly in position to give you a street address,” Anne said. “We’re not exactly taking the scenic route.”

“Roads,” Dan intoned. “Where we’re going, we don’t need _roads_.”

“God, you’re such a nerd,” Anne said, then, just as fervently. “I love you.” She managed to turn off the phone and Mayhem ate it.

**Hmmm tasty.**

“What is? The phone? You said you weren’t eating my stuff! That I’d get it back!”

**No.**

Anne stared around, borrowing the eyes, but she didn’t see any dogs or rabbits. And she knew that symbiotes ate humans, and there were lots of those, but she didn’t notice that Mayhem was eyeing one up specifically for a snack.

**Love. You are more tasty, when you are thinking of him.**

*******

_My little sister tased an actual-facts God_ , Dan thought. He threw himself into the driver’s seat, keys already in the ignition before he buckled up. His heart was going a mile a minute, occasionally missing a beat and throwing his vision blurry. His throat ached and he swallowed excessive saliva.

Panic response.

He took a few gulps of air, not even pausing in his driving. He’d been operating in a low grade panic since he stepped foot in med school, sat down for his first class. He wasn’t sure what he’d do without it. Panic drove him-- what if I make a mistake? Which wasn’t the normal sort of anxiety that the rest of the world had. If someone had a mistake in a concert orchestra, the director might notice, but the audience? Probably not.

He actually knew this because his younger brother was in the Philharmonic. He’d never noticed the mistakes that Gregory had made.

Gregory did.

_When I make a mistake, people die._

Calm floated down over him. This was the same. It was the same as stepping into the surgery and putting on gloves. If he made a mistake, people die. Only this time it might be people that he loved.

But it was the same.

He could do this. Ditzy Darcy tased an actual god. She’d saved the world; his dorky little sister who majored in political science with the eye toward being a professional activist. Save the planet, clean up the litter. She’d saved the planet -- and several others, he understood -- in a much bigger way than that.

“Still, picking up trash is important,” Darcy would have told him.

Saving Anne was important. Saving the symbiote children was important.

And he could do it.

“Call Anne,” he barked at his phone. “I’m on route to you, honey. Keep me updated. GPS, best traffic route--”

“Take the shot,” Anne said, and for a moment, Dan felt like he was in a buddy cop movie, the kind where the rookie had to kill someone, and then he realized what she meant. He fumbled in his glovebox and rolled it out-- resembling nothing more than an epi-pen kit. In fact, based on the same technology. Human testing not recommended until--

He cut off the legalities and the protocols that spilled, non-stop from his brain. He flicked the orange safety off and as soon as he stopped at the next red light, stabbed himself in the thigh.

It didn’t really hurt -- like most students, they’d practiced blood draws and saline injections on each other. On themselves. Dosed up with uppers, knocked themselves out with sedatives.

Doctors had one of the highest rates of constant smokers in the country.

_Physician, heal thyself._

“Where are you--”

“Easier for you to tell me where you are, I’ll intercept,” Anne said. “We’re going cross country.”

“Gotcha, headed west toward the boulevard,” Dan said, “just past that Greek place where you like the baklava.”

“That’s sweet,” Anne said. “That you remember.”

That one he remembered because she’d woken him up with menstrual cramps and a craving for flakey pastry, and he’d actually gotten out of bed. _Whipped_ , his friends would have called it, and then thought nothing of the fact that their girlfriends didn’t even wait to be asked, they just brought soup and movies when their men were sick.

It all balanced out in the end, if you were doing it right.

_Lovesick_ , Dan thought. An effect of the symbiote binder. Except he’d always been that way, dedicated and thoughtful.

“About two blocks from you, pull over and get ready to catch--”

“Don’t throw the baby!” Dan shrieked, parking -- badly -- in the nearest parallel spot he could get. He didn’t even have time to put coins in the meter before a buxom blue symbiote practically crushed the car next to him.

“Anne?”

**She’s here,** the symbiote confirmed. **We smell her on you. We smell you on her.**

“Uh, we share a bed, I don’t think that’s unusual--” Dan couldn’t help leaning away from the monster. It wasn’t scientific, but it was true.

**Take him.**

“Uh, does he have a name?”

**Not yet.**

Dan fumbled with the top of the container and the greenish ooze inside…

***

Lasher opened the Host’s eyes.

**Sister** **.** Lasher reached for Mayhem.

“Come on, we need to get away, family reunion later.”

**There is no _getting away._**

Lasher turned, what information they were getting from their host was neat, precise. The Host thought in logical, meticulous ways. The Klyntar behind them must be Toxin, who had taken control of Richard Drake.

On the other side dropped a monster, a creature, a god.

**Knull. I told you, I have this. I don’t need your help.**

**I’m not helping you,** the king-god of the Klyntars spat. **I am helping us.**

“We’re in trouble, can we go now?” Dan wondered from deep inside Lasher, a tiny, yet determined voice. No mindless beast, this, Dan was a creature of his own rights, with needs and a brain and drive to live and succeed.

_If I make a mistake, people die. If you make a mistake, people die._

**No time to flee,** Lasher said. **We must fight.**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/n - Mayhem, in the comics, is May Parker’s (Peter and MJ’s child) cloned twin, April Parker, who was bonded with a non-sentient symbiote to form a second Spider-girl (Earth 982) but because of issues with the movie (and Riot and Carnage’s family tree that got complicated in the movie, I “borrowed” this symbiote.) Also, she’s really cool looking, like a Blue spider-girl.


	8. Oh Dear What Can the Matter Be

Eddie’s cell phone rang, and Venom flipped the screen over so Eddie could see who it was. Dr. Dan.

He almost didn’t answer it; the last thing he wanted to do was get into another how are you feeling conversation. He was fine, Venom took care of him. Not that he wanted to neglect or ignore the contributions that Dan had made. And it was a relief, honestly, not to have to keep his secret around some people.

He considered it long enough that it almost went to voicemail before he scrambled to slide the _answer_.

“What’s up?”

He couldn’t hear a voice over the shriek of bending metal, the crash of something hard and heavy hitting a wall. Screaming in the background, an impossible roaring sound.

Well, that sounded familiar, if even it shouldn’t.

“Where are you?” Eddie bellowed into the phone.  

Instead of a location, he heard a mingle of voices, Anne’s and-- a symbiote? “Could use a **hand here, Eddie**.”

“Where’s here?”

But the line went dead.

“Suit up, love,” Eddie said, letting Venom wash over him like a warm wave. He went up, since up was the best way to get a look around, finding the tallest tower and when he didn’t see any immediate signs of mayhem, went even higher.

No battle from where he was looking, but he did see an ambulance, followed by a couple of cop cars. They raced along the rooftop, keeping time with the ambulance. It wasn’t for sure that a couple of symbiotes would cause people to call 911, but it was a good bet. On the other hand, it was a big city, and there were more problems than just rogue aliens.

This one was a car crash.

Sigh. Probably not even in the right direction.

Eddie and Venom dropped to the ground, waited for one of the cops to get out of his car. Venom knew what he wanted, blurring into the form of a police officer’s uniform. Eddie went up to the car, all casual, and grabbed the radio. “This is car --” glanced at the tags “1629. Dispatch, I’m getting reports of aliens, can confirm?”

“I have you on--”

**Just answer the question!**

The dispatcher gulped audibly. “Yes, reports of monsters confirmed. We’re sending a unit to investigate near Castro Theater.”

Thank you.

Venom dropped the radio, blurring back into themselves. They practically crushed the police car on their way off the scene.

“Can we try to be careful of the collateral damage, my love?” Eddie wondered, and then he was lost in their movements; the way he always felt powerful when Venom was wrapped around him, flex of muscle, stretch of sinew. The way air rushed into their lungs and ichor flowed through their veins. They were like unto a god.

**Loser god.**

“God, you’re such an asshole,” Eddie laughed, still reveling in the motion, swinging from lamp posts and leaping onto buildings to climb them. Taking the fast route.

**God of losers. You and me, Eddie.**

“Yeah, I know,” Eddie said. It took them a lot less time to cross town than expected, and they leaped into the fray with barely a look around.

Which wasn’t good, because apparently the first symbiote he engaged with was Anne.

“Good look for you,” Eddie said, because she was blue and black and fierce. Beautiful, in a wild way.

**Hit them, you idiot.**

“What have we got?”

**Shit you never seen before.**

“You say that every time,” Eddie complained. The Grendel, he’d seen before, hulking and crazed, but there were more. He’d never seen so many symbiotes in one place.

**Family reunion,** Venom explained.

“Who are the bad guys?”

One of the green symbiotes pushed through, and Dan waved at him. “This is so weird, but my sister hangs out with literal gods, I got this, I got this, we’re--”

**Shut up, Lasher.**

The Grendel appeared to have reinforcements, a green oozy dude -- **Toxin, spawn of Riot** \-- and a couple others, yellow and black, a red and gold one with symbiote hair that stood out like they were in an eighties rock band, and a moldy brown looking one.

**Sleeper, Scream, and Phage,** Venom said. **My children.**

“Why’s your kid look like Vince Neil?”

**Bad taste. We can take it up with them later?**

Eddie didn’t bother to answer that, because he was too busy leaping into the fray. Bodies moving, cars being thrown, buildings coming down. “I hope you’re insured,” Eddie said, wincing as one of the symbiotes smashed a hot dog cart.

Venom grabbed a plastic bag full of cheesy goodness from the cart and squeezed half of it into their maw before throwing the bag at one of the children. **Sleeper?**

Sleeper had multiple eyes, like a horror movie spider, but most of them were at half mast. Eddie could see where the infant symbiote got their name. They seemed somehow driven into the battle, like the host inside was hurting them, somehow.

**It is Knull. Sleeper only knows obedience.**

“Right, kill the Grendel, got it,” Eddie yelled. “Concentrate on the big guy!”

Anne and her symbiote charged, Mayhem forming bolts of blue goo, hardening in the air, and ripping into the Grendel’s form, tearing bits of the protective symbiote aside, caging them. That was a neat trick. Eddie and Venom were more of a melee weapon, slashing and hammering, clawing and biting.

Tasmanian Devil dude, Eddie thought. Doctor Dan was all ropy tendrils and lashing whips, pulling, tangling, ripping. They were strong, Venom’s children. A surge of paternal heat seared Eddie’s spine.

They were Venom’s children, and Eddie was so, so proud of them.

***

“I--” Dan said, then turned and puked in the gutter. Fortunately, it was just bile and nothing compared to what he’d been eating. “Ate that guy’s head.”

“Yeah, that happens,” Anne said. She peeled out of Mayhem, the blue symbiote staying in her hair. She glanced in the reflection of a shop window, one of the few that wasn’t shattered. The symbiote hairdo gave her a very punk-rock look. If she had to be honest, it looked good. She looked good. “At least--”

She almost told him that the Grendel at least wasn’t human. The abandoned monster, still laying on the street, was more like a troll or half-giant or something. But she wasn’t quite sure that it wasn’t better.

Cannibalism was… just one of those things, in the larger picture. She’d personally been involved in multiple vigilante devourings, and it didn’t even bother her anymore that it didn’t bother her.

“I liked it,” Dan said, shuddering.

**Yeah, can we have a moral quandary later, and get the fuck out of here now?**

Venom leaped onto one of the few cars in the area that wasn’t squashed; fixed that problem, now it was a matched set. Venom had a tiny symbiote tucked in the crook of his arm, a little blobby baby of yellow and black goop.

“Oh, he’s so cute,” Anne said, going over to look at the sleepy child. “Can I hold him?”

**Yes. There are more.**

“What are we going to do with a handful of symbiotes, you can’t adopt-- Anne, no,” Dan said. “You cannot adopt a whole houseful of babies, we don’t--”

**She’s not listening to you, Dannie boy.**

Anne was, but she was more absorbed in staring down at the adorable little goo-baby.

**Sleeper Brother,** Mayhem said, poking the baby with one tendril.

“Don’t wake him up,” Anne said, rocking the infant, resting her cheek against the warm goo.

Venom ripped toddler-sized yellow and orange symbiote off their back. **Dan, you hold Screamer.**

“Did I do something wrong in a past life?”

**If we want to have any life left, we need to go now.**

There were sirens in the distance, and while the symbiotes could, easily, take down an entire squad of riot police, it seemed wasteful to kill people who weren’t the enemy.

Venom grabbed one last symbiote and tucked it under one thick arm.

“What about Richard Drake?”

**Toxxin is not our spawnling. We will leave it here to die.**

“Friendly,” Dan commented.

**Don’t touch it.**

Lasher’s tentacles stopped less than an inch away from their cousin. The symbiote’s blood was currently eating through the damn pavement, and Anne wasn’t sure how they were supposed to contain it.

Let the experts handle it, they had their family.

“There are people who can contain--” Anne knew that glass could hold them, that fire could hurt them. Sound, too. But she was currently wrapped inside something that would be hurt by fire.

Fire didn’t care who it hurt, and it wasn’t generally directional, unless they started fighting with flamethrowers.

**Run now, think later.**

Anne curled her arms around Sleeper and tucked the infant inside Mayhem, half her attention on the baby, and half on the road. They fled in a pack, moving quickly. Venom led them out to the bay, and then into the water.

**Throw them off the trail, we can resurface at night, when they stop looking.**

Underwater was nice, peaceful. Quiet. The pressure of the water from all directions was like home, a home that Anne had never seen.

“You okay, Annie?” Eddie slid out of Venom, and it was strange, hearing him underwater, the way his voice was low and easy, the way none of them had to breathe air.

“It’s… amazing,” Anne admitted, and she reached for Dan, wanting the comfort of his skin. “We’re amazing.”

**We sure are.**


	9. Ashes, Ashes, We all Fall Down

Eddie hovered at the lab door, like he was an expectant father watching them bring the infant into the nursery.

**That is what we are, Eddie** , Venom told him.

**Parents.**

Anne joined him; the only part of her that indicated that Mayhem had taken up permanent residence was the stripes of blue hair. “It’s going to be fine. It’ll work.”

It didn’t seem fair to look for more hosts, Dan had reasoned. Sharing their lives with a handful of alien symbiotes was enough of a struggle without trying to find people who could not only carry the aliens, but who were going to be a good fit for their little family. Another solution, aside from keeping them permanently in tanks with the proper air and pressure, that is. The symbiotes were -- well, not human, precisely, but sentients. “You need to be free,” Eddie agreed. “Not prisoners. Not pets.”

**Predators** , Mayhem suggested.

“Yes, but only _bad_ people, we talked about this,” Eddie said.

**Bad people don’t taste any better.**

**They don’t taste worse** , Venom said.

**True.**

Dr. Dan entered the lab, Lasher extruding from his back like some sort of deformed octopus, carrying vials and an infuser.

“If this works,” Anne said, “they won’t need hosts.”

“It’ll work,” Eddie said, linking his hand with hers. Because it had to.

Sleeper was their first test symbiote; the baby had permanently adopted a goo-baby state, using arms and legs, despite having decided that multiple eyes was fashionable or something. Sleeper didn’t bond, not even with a proven host; not Eddie nor Dan nor Anne. Sleeper wanted to run solo. Complained, in fact, that the idea of having more voices in their head was too many.

Venom translated. Sleeper didn’t speak English.

Venom wrapped around Eddie like a cloak. _It will be all right, my love,_ Eddie told him.

Dr. Dan pressed the infuser to the capsule.

“Here goes everything,” he said.

Anne’s arm slipped around Eddie’s waist and they watched, waiting.

Family.


End file.
